Читать книгу Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain - Annette M. B. Meakin - Страница 6

“Inique super gravios lucentes volvit arenas,

Infernae populis referens oblivia Lethes.”[33]

The name of Limia was thought by Florez to be derived from the Greek word λιμνη, a lake; Pliny called it Limæa, and said that some called it Flumen oblivionis—“river of forgetfulness.” This river rises in the lake of Antela in the province of Orense, and, after flowing through a fertile valley to which it has given its name, and receiving the waters of two smaller streams, the Ginzo and the Salas, enters Portugal at Landoso, and at length flows into the Atlantic Ocean at Vianna de Castello.[34] The Greeks and Romans seem to have persuaded themselves that this river had the power of making people forget, in a moment and for ever, everything connected with the past; they consequently regarded it with positive terror—

“Formidatumque militibus flumen oblivionis.”[35]

Strabo tells how an allied army of Celts and Bætians who had joined forces for some particular expedition quarrelled after passing the Limia, and killed in the fray their common leader, after which they one and all, forgetting what was the object of their expedition and whither they were bound, became scattered, and each man returned home independently of the others.[36] Decimus Junius Brutus was the first Roman who dared to cross the river, and Livy relates that when Brutus ordered his soldiers to cross it they refused to do so, in fear lest by so doing they might lose all memory of their country; whereupon Brutus, seizing the flag from his standard-bearer, waded into the river alone, and, having reached the opposite bank, returned to his soldiers and entreated them to follow him across, which they, overcoming their superstition, eventually did. More than one Portuguese poet, charmed by the beauty of the Limia’s winding banks and by the gentle flow of its limpid waters, and above all by its historic name—“river of forgetfulness”—has crystallised the legend of its miraculous power in musical verse, such as—

“O’ que inveja vos hei a esse correr,

Pola praia de Lima abaixo e’ arriba

Que tem tanta virtute de esquecer!”

Limia, in Portuguese, is spelt Lima, and the Lima of Peru was named after this river. Another point of interest in connection with this river of classic fame is the discovery that has recently been made by Dr. Marcelo Macias of the exact site upon which there once stood a great city, mentioned by Ptolemy as φορος λιμιχῶν and by later Roman writers as Civitas Limicorum.

Another of Galicia’s rivers, the Miño, is one of the six largest rivers in Spain. Its present name was given to it by the Romans; it is a Latin word meaning vermilion,[37] and was chosen on account of the metallic yellow its waters left upon their banks. St. Isidore and Justin both give this explanation of the name. Pliny says its mouth was four (Roman) miles wide, and Strabo adds that it was navigable for a distance of about eight hundred stadia. In the present day it is not navigable for even half that distance—“a great loss,” remarks Florez, “to commerce.” Florez, however, is convinced that the ancients called by the name of Miño the river that is now called the Sil—because the Sil is the river whose banks receive the vermilion. Orosius, moreover, speaks of Monte Medulio as situated above the Miño, whereas it is now above the Sil, at the point where that river enters Galicia, and the earth there is said to be of a reddish hue. Besides, the Sil runs into the sea, receiving the waters of many other streams, but it does not flow into any river. Molina, however, whose description of Galicia was first published in 1550, goes still further, and says he is sure the Gallegans changed the names of the two rivers because the Sil was a foreign river, rising outside Galicia, whereas the Miño was a native! Molina believed that the Miño got its name from Miñan, the spring which is its source. The Miño rises near the town of Lugo, flows through the province of Orense, and, while forming the natural boundary between Galicia and Portugal, flows into the Atlantic a little beyond the town of Tuy. The beauty of the scenery through which the Miño passes after it has left the town of Orense is hardly to be surpassed in the whole of Spain.

Two other important rivers are the Sar and the Tambre, called by the ancients “Sars” and “Tamaris.” Both of these rivers are historically famous. Pliny mentions only two rivers in Spain as possessing the properties that temper iron—the Bibilis and the Turrafo. But Silius Italicus mentions the river Calybe as one whose waters were used to temper the metal of Spanish arms, and immediately afterwards he refers to the arms made in Galicia, and to their excellent quality. He supports the opinion of Justin, that Gallegan arms were alone found worthy to be used by the great Hannibal, whom the Spaniards presented with a complete suit of armour ornamented with tiny pictures of Dido and Æneas, of which each piece had been tempered by the waters of the Calybe and decorated with gold from the sands of the Tagus.

The river Calybe now bears the name of Cabe: it rises in the hills of Cebrero and flows into the Sil at the foot of the vine-clad mountain on which stands the ruined monastery of San Esteban. St. Isidore thought that this river gave the name of Calybis to iron, but the ancient Calybes of the east (afterwards called Chaldeans, according to Strabo) are said to have been the first people to employ iron; so the Gallegan river must surely have derived its name from them.

Another important river is the Eo, which, rising in Galicia above Salvatierra, divides this province from that of Asturias, and is the natural boundary line between Lugo and Oviedo. Galicia has upon her coast some of the finest harbours in Europe. Vigo, for one, has often been described as the finest natural harbour in the world; while Ferrol, once so famous as the Arsenal of Spain, is likely to become ere long, in the hands of English shipbuilders, one of the world’s greatest dockyards, and to supply ironclads to all the nations. One of the ships with which Columbus set sail to discover America was called La Gallega, and a book has been written to prove that not only did the great discoverer set sail from the harbour of Pontevedra, but his ship, La Gallega, was built in her dockyards with the wood of Gallegan pines.[38]

Many of the beautiful trees and shrubs that help to make Galicia’s gardens so beautiful in our day were imported by Jesuits who had gone as missionaries to the New World. In

THE RIVER SIL, ORENSE

short, if the traveller really wishes to understand and appreciate Galicia or any other part of Spain, it is imperative that, side by side with the objects of interest that present themselves to his view, he should become acquainted with the story of Spain’s glorious past. All who have studied Galicia are unanimous in their opinion that she contains more relics of that past and more trophies of antiquity than any other part of the Peninsula.